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Wednesday, September 07, 2011

By March 2003, with the Commission’s staff barely in place, a detailed outline, complete with “chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings” of The 9/11 Commission Report had been prepared (Shenon, p389). At the first public hearing, Chairman Kean asked, “What kind of fanaticism drove them to do this?”

With the goal set, contradictory evidence was excluded; the final report was fatally flawed.
Bin Laden is not wanted by the FBI for 9/11.

There were no Arab names on the published passenger lists, several of the hijackers are reported to be alive, the 9/11 Commission ignored the discrepancies.

Aircraft impact and the resulting fires could not have brought down the Twin Towers—evidence of explosives was ignored by the 9/11 Commission.

The collapse of the 47-story 7 World Trade Center in about seven seconds has yet to be explained —NIST’s computer simulation is inconclusive.

There’s little or no evidence that Flight 93 ploughed into the ground at the Pennsylvania “crash site”.

There’s no hard evidence that Flight 77 struck the Pentagon—photos, videos, and other evidence is being withheld by the U.S. government.

The architects of the 9/11 attacks have yet to be unveiled. To begin to identify them one needs to answer: Who is responsible for the continuing cover-up? Who had the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out these attacks? Who benefited?

But the U.S. government is anxious to avoid having The 9/11 Commission Report scrutinized too closely, and is not interested in an independent investigation.

According to Sahr MuhammedAlly, who observed part of the proceedings at Guantanamo, during the war crimes tribunal—the first since WWII—convened to try Bin Laden’s onetime driver, Salim Hamdan, the government claimed that The 9/11 Commssion Report—a New York Times bestseller—was classified and could not be used in the trial (democracynow.org, August 7, 2008)!

The credibility of the Bush administration, and America’s reputation, are at an all-time low. The dollar has plunged, the U.S. economy is in recession, and taxpayers are stuck with about a trillion dollar bill to bailout failing banks. The “peace dividend” has been squandered.

When the Euro was launched on January 2, 2002, it could be purchased for about a dollar. Today, it takes about a $1.60 to purchase. A costlier Euro, and costlier foreign currencies, means Americans pay more for imports.

The war on Islam has boomeranged.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes, estimate the cost of the Iraq war at $3 to $5 trillion. At a time when funds are needed for health care, education, infrastructure, that’s $10,000 to over $16,000 for every American.

This is in addition to the $481 billion budgeted for defense in 2008. Compare this to $500 billion budgeted by the rest of the world combined!

It is reported that more than 4000 American soldiers have died, 320,000 had brain injuries, and 300,000 U.S. veterans have mental problem (Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, April 17, 2008).

The United Nations Compensation Commission imposed a total of $53 billion in war reparations charges against Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. What does the U.S. owe Iraq in reparations?

In the 10 years prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 500,000 children and old people died as a result of U.S.-UN sanctions. More than 1.1 million have died as a result of the invasion
(Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, January/February 2008):

[A] Johns Hopkins study estimated that, as of July 2006, 655,000 Iraqis had been killed, about 600,000 of them violently and at least 30 percent directly by coalition forces. It updated an earlier study (Lancet, 10/29/04) that estimated that 100,000 Iraqis had died during the first year of the war. An extrapolation of the Johns Hopkins estimate of violent deaths done by Just Foreign Policy (9/18/07) currently stands at over 1.1 million.

In the U.S., “North Korea and Iran are seen as the biggest risks. However, the youngest U.S. respondents share the Europeans’ view that theirs is the biggest threat, with 35 per cent of American 16- to 24-year-olds identifying it [U.S.] as the chief danger to stability”, according to a survey by Harris Research for the Financial Times (July 1, 2007).

The American Human Development Report (July 16, 2008) funded by Oxfam America, the Conrad Hilton Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation, found that the U.S. had slumped from 2nd place in 1990 to 12th place.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. needed new “enemies” to justify maintaining the bloated military-industrial complex, and to control the resources and markets of other countries which it has done for decades.

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn’t a war about oil. That’s cynical and simplistic, they said. It’s about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be . . . It is about oil.

While most Americans seek an end to the Iraq war, “Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran” writes Patrick J. Buchanan —senior adviser to American presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile the killing goes on.

Americans and Muslims are dying in wars promoted by the military, industrial, congressional complex, global corporations, Israel, and Christian Zionists.

Despite what they tell us, Afghanistan is not the “good war.”

Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial, has called waging aggressive war “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (Benjamin B. Ferencz, Salzburg Law School, Summer 2004).

For the military-industrial complex and global corporations wars are for profit. For Israel, wars are for land, water, and regional supremacy. For Christian Zionists the target is Islam. For the U.S. wars are largely for control of resources and markets—particularly the energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia.

In February 24, 1948, George Kennan—one of the most influential figures of the Cold War, stated in the top secret Policy Planning Study 23 for the U.S. Department of State:

we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 % of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. . . . Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity . . .

Al-Qaeda itself does not exist, except in the fevered imaginations of neo-cons and Likudniks . . . who find it extremely useful as a bogeyman to spook the public and the politicians to acquiesce in otherwise unacceptable policy initiatives at home and abroad. Very simply, what you have are loose networks of likeminded individuals . . . They conduct their operations strictly by themselves, even if they may from time to time seek advice.

In Who Speaks for Islam?, a product of the Gallup World Poll’s massive research, authors John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed find that Muslims around the world want basically what Americans want. They reject terrorism, they admire the West for its technology and democracy. What they least admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values. They criticize or celebrate countries based on their politics, not based on their culture or religion.

The “clash of civilizations” exists only in the imaginations of those who lead us to war for money or power. Ultimately, most wars are a clash of values—greed versus justice.